Audi AR App Brings Advertising Into Your Living Room

Car salesman are always trying to get you to “picture this baby at home in your driveway.”

But who needs imagination when we have augmented reality?

Audi has released a new AR smartphone application that is triggered by their TV commercials. The app brings the cars from the commercial out of the screen and into your living room or driveway.

According to a release from the company, the Audi quattro coaster AR application “recognizes” specific Audi TV commercials. If the right commercial is playing, it will then trigger a series of AR events.

As the commercial plays, the app will show one of four quattro-powered cars bursting out of your TV and rocketing directly into your living room or driveway.

If simply admiring an AR model of an Audi doesn’t sound like your idea of a good time, have I got some good news for you. The app also lets you shrink the vehicles down to matchbox size and create Hot Wheels style tracks for them to zip around on.

The Quattro Coaster app was created by Audi Norway in conjunction with Norwegian creative agency POL Oslo.

Anna Adamson, a producer on the project, explains how Apple’s AR Kit and computer vision to bring this idea to life:

“To achieve a seamless transition from the TV ad to Augmented Reality we use computer vision to detect the quattro coaster TV ad. Then, we sync and position the augmented content on the screen. What’s interesting is that the car remains in the room even after the ad has ended. Apples ARKit gives us the freedom to tell new types of stories, which can effortlessly span over several mediums.”

This will all sound relatively straightforward for anyone that’s been following AR’s progression on smartphones over the past few years. But while it may not be groundbreaking from an experiential standpoint, it should raise the eyebrows of advertisers around the world.

The advertiser’s objective is to create meaningful moments with consumers and their brand. This app is the kind of engagement-extending experience that ad folk dream about.

Think about it like this: Even if you were to download this app, check it out briefly and then delete it right away, you’ve still meaningfully engaged with the Audi brand way more than you would have by scrolling through your Instagram feed while their commercial rambles by in the background.

Even if you only go though the experience for five minutes, that means Audi has increased the engagement time of their 30 second ad that triggers the experience by 900 percent.

There isn’t a marketing manager on the planet that wouldn’t drool over those numbers.

Audi quattro coaster AR is available now for free download on any iOS device.